Last week, the 2022 midterm elections occurred on Nov. 8, 2022, and since then the votes have been counted to see who will take the majority party in the legislative branch.
At current standings, 538.com, which combines the polls of all midterm elections and tries to predict the likelihood of who will win, gives the Republicans a 59% chance of taking the senate and an 82% chance of taking the house from the Democrats.
As of the end of last week, votes are still being counted in Arizona and Nevada, while Georgia goes into a run-off election for their senate election between Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock. It is still unknown who will hold the senate until all the votes are counted.
However, the U.S. House of Representatives is being handed over to the Republicans who gained sixteen seats while Democrats only gained 4, thus losing their majority in the house.
For Louisiana, the candidates running are specifically running for the Senate seat held by incumbent Republican Sen. John Kennedy who took over David Vitter’s seat in 2017 when Vitter opted not to seek re-election, beating his opponent Foster Campbell by a 61% margin.
The most likely candidates to beat the incumbent are community activist Gary Chambers and former Air Force Pilot Luke Mixon, both running under the democratic party.
Public Policy Polling, polled Kennedy at 53%, Mixon at 16% and Chambers at 8% support going into the midterms.
On election night, Sen. John Kennedy won by a near supermajority at the same margin he won in 2017, at 61.6% or 851,104 votes. Surprisingly Gary Chambers overperformed at 17.9% of the vote while Luke Mixon underperformed at 13.2% of the vote.
On Nov. 8, voters also saw eight constitutional amendments to vote on. Seven of these were minor changes in the tax code and allowing classified civil service employees to publicly support candidates. However, one of the most controversial is Amendment Seven.
According to the British Broadcasting Corporation, five states during the midterms had ballot initiatives or constitutional amendment votes on whether they should allow involuntary servitude or slavery.
States like Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, and Louisiana voted to decide if such should be kept as a punishment or not for inmates. All four except Louisiana voted to remove slavery as a form of punishment.
Opponents like State Representative Edmond Jordan (D) claimed the language was too confusing and that if drafted could lead to multiple different interpretations.
Louisiana voted 60.85% or 790,445 voters said No to removing slavery as a form of punishment for a crime. 39.15% or 508,513 voters said Yes to the removal of the statute in the constitution.